The Malice of Unnatural Death:

by Michael Jecks

  ‘Yes. He was no runaway serf.’

  ‘A man of some position, then, to have acquired his own house. And you turned to tanning.’

  ‘So?’ Michael said defensively. It was not an occupation that would appeal to all, but he had never regretted his choice of career. ‘It makes me a good income.’

  ‘Yes, I am sure.’ Baldwin sighed a little. ‘Tell me, do you know anything about a man called Walter of Hanlegh?’

  ‘I have heard of him,’ Michael said suspiciously. He could sense Robinet tensing, and looked his way. The old messenger was gazing at him with a scowl.

  ‘What do you know of him?’ Coroner Richard boomed.

  ‘Little enough. I never wanted to meet a man like him. Always reluctant to tell what he used to do, apparently. You can’t trust a man who won’t even say what he does.’

  ‘Is that true?’ Baldwin asked Robinet.

  Robinet shrugged. ‘He and I worked for the king. We did as we were commanded.’

  ‘You worked for the king too?’

  Robinet set his head to one side and grimaced. ‘Keeper, I was a messenger. Like the man you found the other day down at the South Gate. I was one of the king’s men.’

  The world looked a little improved, at first, from the bottom of a leathern jug, but soon the warming flood of ale was depleted, and all that happened was that Jen’s tears felt all the more unsupportable.

  He had given her to believe that he loved her. That was the thing. Whether or not she had any feelings for him, he had made her believe he adored her. It was his languishing expression that had made her begin to feel affection for him in the first place. She was quite sure of it. Not that Sarra could see it, but Sarra was so short-sighted, she wouldn’t have seen a knight’s shield if it stood in front of her.

  It must be cowardice. That was it. He didn’t want to risk his marriage to the harpy. When Jen had flown from the bedchamber and sought him out in the hall, he had been surprised and then shocked and fearful, because his wife was there too and could hear every word. Oh, she should have thought it through! If only she had considered, she would have seen how it must affect him. He was too kind to want to hurt his wife, even if he didn’t love her any more. Surely he wanted Jen still. Perhaps even now he was searching the streets for her, trying to learn where she had gone so that he could protect her and plan with her how he could win his freedom. There was no possibility that she could live in an adulterous marriage with him. He must discover a means of divorce if it were at all possible.

  Although the bitch, his wife, might try to prevent him. It was the sort of poisonous thing a woman like her would do. Women like her, like Alice, who were born to high families, were frigid. They had no idea of great love. They were bartered and sold for position, like heifers. Surely she couldn’t seek to make him unhappy for the whole of his life, though. She had been a failure as a wife so far, not giving him his children. He needed them. All men did.

  But if he was searching the streets for her, she must get up and make herself visible to him. Yes. She stood and left the tavern a little unsteadily, gripping the door-frame as she passed into the street.

  There was a gap in the clouds, and the houses on the northern side of the street were lighted with a shaft so bright that it hurt her eyes. She had to shade them as she made her way over the street and into an alley that led south to the High Street. There she turned left towards the castle.

  The High Street was busy now as people hurried to find food for their dinner, and she was knocked about a little as she struggled onwards. And then, as she was coming closer to the castle, she stopped.

  There in front of her was her friend Sarra, and as Jen was about to rush to her to beg for money, advice, help, she saw the other face a step or two behind: her old mistress, the poisonous bitch Alice, walking towards her.

  ‘So, master,’ Baldwin said. ‘Perhaps you should tell us your whole story.’

  They had left the street, and at the suggestion of the coroner had walked a short distance to a small alehouse towards the West Gate. Now they stood inside, all with ales in their fists except Baldwin, who had eschewed the drink in favour of a cup of hot water with dried mint leaves infusing in it. He sniffed the brew every so often, as though the vapours could remove the foulness of the death he had seen in that undercroft.

  ‘I was born Robinet of Newington, although everyone calls me Newt,’ the man began. ‘Many years ago I was recommended to the prince, as he then was, and he took to me, and brought me into his household as a cursor, a runner. He’d use me to fetch and carry messages all over the country. As his household grew, so did my duties, and when he became king, he kept me. At all times, he was a good, fair and decent master, too.

  ‘When he was into his second year as king, he had need of more messengers, and he had me take a man on for him, to teach him what was necessary. That man was poor James.’

  ‘You could have saved people some time if you had come forward and told us all you knew at the time of his inquest,’ the coroner growled.

  ‘And if I had, you would have arrested me for being his killer.’

  ‘Why should we?’

  ‘I was with him on the night he died,’ Newt said. He shivered. Telling his life story was the last thing he had intended to do, but once he began to speak, it was hard to stop with all their eyes upon him. ‘If I had come forward, I thought men would point to me and say: “He was with James, he must have killed him!” ’

  ‘It should take more than proximity to have a man arrested,’ Simon observed.

  ‘Should it? I taught James all I knew. How to find the best resting places, how to make up time when one day goes slowly, where to have boots mended … for a man walking thirty-five miles a day, there is much to take in. At the end of it all, when he was as good as I could make him, I saw him clad in my master’s uniform. I was proud for him. Proud! And then, with the end of the Scottish wars after Bannockburn, for a time all became confused. There was less need for messengers to go north, and many men-at-arms sought new posts, since without the wars they had little to do. And it was rumoured that some of us would lose our jobs.

  ‘The easiest thing would have been to get rid of the older men. All of us knew it. Anyway, it was my own silly fault. I was in my cups one day and admitted to the bailiff of my local vill, Saer Kaym, that the king had been forced to retreat from Scotland because he didn’t bother to attend mass, he was lazy, and indecent. Christ’s saints, the man enjoyed playing at being a serf, making hedges and digging ditches. Well, news of my words got back to the king. I was imprisoned. It was not a good time for me.’

  ‘And the man who allowed this tittle-tattle to reach the king’s ears?’ Baldwin asked mildly.

  ‘As you guessed. My friend James was with me when I said those things to Saer, and he told the king. But the queen interceded on my behalf, and I believed my friend when he told me on the night he died that she only did so because he had told her what had happened to me. Otherwise I might still be there now.’

  ‘Still, you did have good reason to wish to curse James at the time,’ Simon noted.

  ‘Yes. And when I bumped into him here in Exeter, I wanted to grab a knife and end his life there and then for what he did. Except then I saw his eyes, and instead of remembering that one crime against me, I found myself recalling all the evenings by a campfire, or at an inn. All the dinners we’d taken together, all the ale we’d drunk … it made it hard to stick steel in his belly. And then I saw another thing – he was terrified of me. Terrified! Of me! It made me want to slap him about the face, seeing that. So when he offered to buy me an ale, I had to accept.’

  ‘Did he tell you what he was doing in the city?’ Coroner Richard asked.

  ‘He was bringing messages to the sheriff mainly, although there was something for the bishop too. It was mainly the sheriff. Have you heard of the arrests in Coventry? There has been a necromancer there, who, with twenty or more others, plotted to kill the king and his advisers, if you c
an believe it! James said that he was here with special writs for the sheriff to arrest any other culprits down here, and then to have them sent to London to be questioned by the king’s own men.’

  ‘I see. Do you have any idea who could have wanted to see your old companion dead?’ Baldwin enquired after a moment.

  ‘Ah!’ Newt said. He took a long pull at his ale and wiped his mouth. Speaking thoughtfully, he told them all he could recall from that last night when he had wandered drunkenly homewards with James, only to wake the next morning alone, and with a broken head.

  ‘Do you think James could have done that to you?’ the coroner demanded. ‘He plied you with ale all night and then struck you down? Hardly credible to me.’

  ‘Or to me, unless he thought that there was danger ahead. I think he saw someone or something that made him fearful. He struck me to keep me quiet, and perhaps leave me safe, before going on. Or he set me down somewhere safe and someone else knocked me down.’

  ‘He was drunk?’ Baldwin shot out.

  ‘We both were.’

  ‘Was there blood near you when you woke?’

  ‘Yes,’ Newt remembered. ‘And on my knife.’

  ‘Then the riddle is easily explained. The messenger was the target, Master Robinet. You gained your lump when you were knocked down by an assailant – or two or three – who wanted information from James. I imagine they cut off his fingers while he was alive in order to prise that information from him. If they wanted to torture him extensively, that would have taken time, and perhaps they had little enough. Still, they got such information as they felt they needed, so they drew a cord about his throat and killed him. Perhaps in the barn with you, perhaps at the rubbish heap. And then they simply hid him. And there he might have lain for some while, if a hog hadn’t taken a fancy to his hand.’

  ‘That is all clear enough. Except, why should the messenger be killed?’ Simon muttered.

  ‘I think this man has answered that for us already,’ Baldwin said. ‘John of Nottingham was the man Michael said was renting that undercroft. And now we hear of a necromancer from Coventry who caused writs to be sent all about the country. Do you not think that perhaps this John could have escaped, only to see the messenger who was carrying messages to have him arrested? What would John do? He paid an accomplice and hunted down the messenger, bringing him to a place where he knew he could overwhelm the fellow, and when he was sure he had all he needed, he killed James and threw away his body. A callous and barbaric way to treat a Christian corpse.’

  ‘What of John’s murder today?’

  ‘I should think that someone who wanted revenge against him must have decided to take action,’ Baldwin said quietly.

  ‘Me? But I swear, I wouldn’t recognise him if I saw him,’ Robinet said hastily. ‘You must believe me, Sir Baldwin. I had no idea. All I was doing there was watching for the stranger, to see …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I wanted to see whether it was the same man I thought I had seen the night James was killed. But from the description, I don’t see how it could have been. The man I saw was not too tall. But others said the killer was over there at the house.’

  ‘Well, let us hope he was the killer,’ Coroner Richard grunted heavily. ‘Rather than some poor innocent, eh?’ And he looked at Newt with a contemplative air.

  It was plain enough that he thought Newt had taken the law into his own hands and removed a murderer. And did not disapprove.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Exeter City

  Alice saw the crowd outside the house from the top of Stepecote Street, and she glanced at Sarra with a perplexed frown. ‘What is all this? I thought he was released today.’

  ‘I shall go and ask, mistress, if you want,’ Sarra suggested, and soon she was pushing her way through the mass of people. She could not reach the front of the crowd, but from a vantage point – which was a small wooden crate she found lying in the street – she was able to see that there was a beadle standing nervously with a polearm in his hand, surveying the crush with wariness bordering on alarm. Sarra recognised him, but there was no possibility of getting to him and asking what was happening, not with all these people about. However, there was a small, scruffy urchin nearby. She stepped down from the box and walked up to him.

  ‘What is happening over there?’

  Rob had been happily engaged in studying a pair of pigeons on the roof and wondering whether he could hit one with a stone when the young woman prodded him with her foot. He looked her up and down, lifted his eyebrows, shrugged, and snorted to himself. ‘What’s in it for me if I tell you?’

  ‘A smack on your head if you don’t answer sharply,’ Sarra said sweetly. She had two brothers.

  He scowled. ‘There’s a wizard lives here – he’s been murdered. Say his head was almost taken off his body.’

  Sarra gave him a close look. She only knew of one necromancer in this street. ‘I heard tell he was all right this morning. He had been kept in the gaol overnight and released earlier today – and now he’s dead?’

  ‘Look over there and you’ll see the beadle guarding the body until the inquest can be held,’ Rob said. He was waiting here for Busse to reappear. The man had retreated into the house with Langatre a short time ago, and Rob wanted to follow him again. It was growing chilly out here. Even in the midday sun it was cold.

  ‘Do they know who killed him? Or why?’

  ‘Nah! You know how people are. The fornicating churls from this roadway are all clucking about like gossips from any other, but they won’t help the coroner for nothing.’

  ‘Wait there!’ Sarra said, and hurried to her mistress. ‘Langatre priest is dead, my lady,’ she gasped as she reached Lady Alice. ‘Apparently someone murdered him this morning. I saw the beadle there with my own eyes.’

  Lady Alice felt as though she had been buffeted by a heavy blow. She rocked on her heels and blinked, momentarily overwhelmed by nausea. There was only one thought in her mind: that her husband had somehow learned about her visits to Langatre and had taken his own revenge for her discussions with the magician.

  It was no surprise. If a man learned that his barren wife was seeking the aid of a magician, he might well imagine that the latter could have taken advantage of her. And although she had been the soul of propriety in all their negotiations, she could all too easily comprehend that her husband might have flown off the handle at the thought that she had been here to consult a known sorcerer. It must have made him mad.

  Unless it was something to do with that little whore Jen.

  Alice felt the breath catch in her throat at the thought. What if Jen was in reality her husband’s lover, as the mediocre-minded little hussy had implied? If Matthew was in love with her, he would not want Alice to suddenly conceive, and he would ruthlessly remove any man who might be able to help her …

  No, that was ridiculous. And yet, if he heard that his own wife was consulting a necromancer in order to achieve something, just at the time when he had learned of the attack on Hugh le Despenser, he would want the fact suppressed. And he could be ruthless in pursuit of his career, as Alice knew. It was foolish in the extreme of her not to have seen this! So stupid! For her to see a magician at just this time was asking for trouble. Of course her husband could not possibly condone her visits to Langatre when his own master, Despenser, would be made so angry by the idea. It was just a matter of bad fortune that she had decided to come here today to see him, after reading that curious little note.

  Be careful! she had read. Your husband knows all our business.

  Fortunately she had had the presence of mind to throw the offending thing straight onto the fire, and then, calling for Sarra, had felt a little foolish in leaving so swiftly, but now she felt more than ever vindicated. It was merely a shame that she had not managed to get here sooner, or that the message had not been sent earlier so that she could have come and protected Langatre from her husband’s men.

  ‘Mistress? What would you have us
do?’ Sarra asked.

  ‘We should return to the castle,’ Alice said with a catch in her throat. She turned, and was about to make her way up the street when she saw the twisted features only a pace or two away. As the steel flashed, Alice screamed and lifted both hands to protect herself.

  Michael Tanner felt tired as he left the keeper and his companions. They had questioned him quite fiercely, he felt, and the experience had left him drained. And it was all for nothing, sod them all!

  The last days had been exhausting. Ever since the shock of hearing that the attempt to assassinate the king and his bastard sons-of-the-devil, the two Despensers, had been betrayed, Tanner had been on tenterhooks, waiting for the men to arrive at his door and take him away. Yet nothing had happened. Life had continued as though nothing untoward had occurred. While he knew that men were being tortured in Coventry, he heard no signs here in Exeter that anything was wrong.

  And it was good to reflect that while all the associates in the attempt were arrested, the one crucial man in the whole enterprise, John of Nottingham, had escaped and made his way here.

  Sheriffs tended to be corrupt, but among such a dishonourable rabble there could be one or two exceptions. And Croyser was one such. A deeply religious man, who believed with all his heart in the life to come and the Gospels, Croyser hated what he saw the Despensers doing to his land and his people. He deplored the way that the king acquiesced to each and every demand made by the Despensers, and he refused to see all the conspirators taken, hanged and displayed in order to satisfy their lust for revenge. Instead he had released John of Nottingham and given him instructions on where to go: to Croyser’s old servant’s son and still loyal retainer, Michael Tanner.

  A message had already arrived, warning Michael to expect John soon, and it was a good thing it got to him. Otherwise he would not have considered talking to such a bedraggled figure.

  He first saw the fugitive necromancer outside the tavern. There was little enough in the sight to inspire confidence. Shabby clothing, gaunt features … little enough to speak of power and importance. Michael would have left him there, had he not already been contacted, and as it was, he at first thought that this was only some beggar who had appeared by coincidence, and would have left him to the mercies of the night. But then he caught sight of those eyes, the deep-set, dark eyes of a man who held inconceivable power. There was a force which emanated from his soul and fired the eyes with authority.